From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu May 07 1998 - 05:00:00 MDT
At 05:05 PM 5/4/98 +0000, Kathryn Aegis <aegis@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>Many Extropians are interested in Objectivist ideas,
True.
>and many Objectivists find Extropians interesting,
Okay.
>and everyone interested in
>either set of ideas seems to end up at the same lectures, along with
>some Libertarians.
Aren't many libertarians Objectivists? And, just as a simple matter of
political classification, all Objectivists should be libertarians if not
Libertarian Party members.
>But, and this is where it gets interesting
>sometimes--Rand couldn't stand Libertarians!
Rand's personal preferences and her rationalizations for them should,
from the perspective of Objectivism as a philosophy, be ignored. One
must separate the thinker from the ideas -- as one should do with any
set of ideas.
>Makes for some noisy
>conversations over dinner, sometimes....In the end, I think you have
>to examine all sets of ideas and draw the best from each, if only to
>keep out of the politics between the groups.
I agree about "examin[ing] all sets of ideas and draw[ing] the best
from each..." with one caveat. This is that one must be selective
given the limits of time, effort, and knowledge. There are, sadly,
many good ideas we will miss in our discussions/researches.
Also, I see nothing wrong with talking politics as long as this does
not become an end in itself.
Finally, I do not think that the difference between libertarians and
Objectivists are political. The two groups overlap to a large extent.
Rand's (and Peter Schwartz's) views on libertarianism are, after all,
silly.
Vivamus!
Daniel Ust
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